


124 (The Witchking)

by krrs



Series: 124 [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Angst, Friendship, Gen, Horror, M/M, Multi, Steve Goes On A Scary Quest To Revive An Old Friend And Makes Some New Friends Along The Way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-11-28 06:27:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18204746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krrs/pseuds/krrs
Summary: “But I’ve been told that you could help me. By many witches, they all said you’ve brought people back before.” Steve stutters, his smile slipping. Dripping down his cheeks like candle wax in a kaleidoscope tent. “I don’t understand why you won’t help bring my friend back.”





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Please read the first part if you haven't, this won't make any sense!)
> 
> So, no. This isn't a everything-will-be-okay, fix-it sequel. It's more of a story about actions and consequences and weird magic. I'm also going to make this a series since these stories take place in a fictional setting that I've been working on for many years and this is a great way to explore it! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first part and please excuse any mistakes!

“But I’ve been told that you could help me. By many witches, they all said you’ve brought people back before.” Steve stutters, his smile slipping. Dripping down his cheeks like candle wax in a kaleidoscope tent. “I don’t understand why you won’t help bring my friend back.”

The girl sighs, and sits across from Steve on the blanketed floor, beckoning for Steve to do the same. She picks at the pulls in her shaw while the flickering of the hanging lanterns wash over them. Her eyes are an unnatural shade of red. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s that this is beyond my capabilities. I’ve performed resurrections before, yes, but only of the recently deceased and when I’ve had access to their physical bodies.”

Steve sits as she talks, folding his legs underneath him. His heart sinks. 

“Ma’am, with all due respect there must be something you can do.” He says, trying not to sound like a whining child. 

“Wanda.”

“Sorry?”

“My name is Wanda,” she smiles. “And I’m very sorry but there isn’t.”

Remaining quiet, Steve trains his eyes on the colorful blankets and rugs that coat the ground of the tent. He blinks away the frustrated tears that begin to form way in the hollow of his eye sockets. “It’s taken a year to get here.” Steve growls. “Each month I was in a different district, talking to different heretics and criminals, interrogating them, bribing them, begging them for information on you.”

“I understand.” Wanda places a hand on top of Steve’s.

“I’m not sure you do.”

“You loved someone and you lost them.” She says, eyes catching Steve’s. “Death happens quickly, unexpectedly, and often unfairly. We are not gods. But sometimes the circumstances allow us to convince ourselves otherwise and sometimes the circumstances do not entertain that fantasy. This is one of the latter.” Wanda pats his hand.

Steve shakes his head with a huff. “I died and was brought back. Any wound I suffer is gone within hours, I can move faster than anyone, I can knock a man out twice my size with one punch. Me!” He gestures to his frail body. “I can turn into a crow and then back into a man.” Wanda doesn’t blink and Steve remembers that she’s called the Scarlet Witch of Fallshire. She’s seen everything. “Before this, I didn’t believe in magic. I didn’t believe in gods or alchemy, but now? I refuse to believe that anything is impossible, so don’t tell me that you can’t bring Bucky back.”

Wanda stares at him for a few seconds before softening. “There is all kinds of magic in the world, Steve. Not all of it is meant to be used. That’s why we have Watchmen, to kill those who have gone too far. You said you’re from the north, right? Where there are entire covens of them!”

Steve nods.

“So, you must understand more than anyone why there are some parts of alchemy I refuse to practice.” Steve stays steely, determined. Wanda unfurls and stands, taking a few steps towards an ornate chest in the rear of the tent. It clicks open and she rummages through with pursed lips. 

“Here,” she turns back to Steve and he stands, frowning at Wanda’s outstretched hands. “There is a way to bring people back in cases like yours. I don’t condone it and I won’t help you with it, but she might. Take this to Natasha Romanov and tell her I sent you. I don’t make any promises, but if you get on her good side, she might agree to help you.”

She hands a dagger to Steve. It’s silver and covered in inscriptions, small enough to conceal easily but large enough to do damage. Steve turns it over in hand, he’s never held a knife before and it’s shape and weight is unfamiliar. Wanda takes it from him and slots in down the side of his boot for him.

“Is she a witch, too?” Steve asks, moving his ankle around, testing the placement of the knife.

“No, she’s a Spider.”

“A spider?”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “A gang member. She belongs to the Spiders.”

“Oh,” Steve’s eyes widen. Mingling with wandering heathens is one thing, getting tangled up with notorious inner city gangs is another. Steve is frowning, hesitant. How is a gang member going to help Steve with resurrection? Wanda chuckles.

“She has experience with this sort of predicament. And the Spiders don’t bite unless you give them reason.” She says, reading his face and going to fetch something from a stack of papers next to the chest. “Plus, you bear gifts! Natasha loves knives.” Steve’s handed a fading map of the district. Wanda points to a large building on the western border. “See this? That’s the old Rosefall asylum, it’s been shut down for years. The Spider’s base is just south of it.”

Steve nods, trying to take it all in. “So, I just go there?” His eyes flit back and forth between the map and Wanda. He’s suddenly struck by how young she looks. 

“Yes. Go there.”

“And I just ask for Natasha?”

“Don’t ask! Never ask the Spiders for anything.” She’s appalled and then turns stern. “Tell them, tell them that you have business with Natasha.” She’s waiting for Steve to confirm, to nod, to say ‘alright’. And he’s watching her with some strain of doubt. Music and chatter surround them and laughter echoes through. It’s all cheerful and almost mocking as is bounces off of courtyard walls and is redirected under fluttering tent flaps.

“Okay.”

Wanda folds the map for Steve and pulls open his jacket to slot in inside one of the pockets. “That’s all I can do for you, Steve.” She sighs.

“No, it’s alright. Thank you for your time and the…” he points to his shoe and breast pocket. “You know.”

Steve exits the large tent with a heavy heart and the tiny pin prick of hope. It feels like a knife in his boot as he steps paired with a thick and folded parchment on top of his heart. The evening sun glows warm above and Steve squints left and right. There’s not enough time to make it across the borough before dark and Steve doesn’t want to wander into Spider territory without the comfort of sunlight. 

Joining a small circle of heretics by a fire, Steve sits and introduces himself. They all smile, shake his hand with their own tattooed and ringed fingers, and offer him rats on a stick. He takes one, eyes it, and bites into the meaty part and chews. Not horrible.

Steve sits with them for a song or two. He tries to enjoy the music, the soulful strumming of traditional instruments but finds everything too heavy. A year. It’s been a year since he watched his best friend die and his bones ache at the memory. He misses Bucky so much he doesn’t think he can take it much longer; it was promised that Wanda could help him. Bucky was supposed to be alive and well and in Steve’s company right now. Instead, he has another place to go. Another person’s kindness to bet on and hope for and beg for, his tongue tastes sour in his mouth. He tells himself that he should be used to this disappointment. Steve claps when the bohemians finish their song, and thanking them for the food and company, he stands and waves farewell.

He turns his collar up. Weaves out of the colorful, song filled, witch laden courtyard and onto the streets of Fallshire. He pulls a few slight of hand tricks until he’s pickpocketed enough coin to pay for a room for the night and asks directions to the nearest inn. He lies in bed and studies the map by oil lamp, the yellowing paper made even more hued against the light. Dark outlines and smeared labels, symbols with no legend. Steve sighs, turns the dimmer closed and falls asleep without ever removing his shoes.

 

⇟

 

Disappointingly, but not unsurprisingly, his task is not any less daunting when he awakens. He’s out the inn by early morning and marching west. It’s raining slow, like melting glass and sticking to cobblestone streets in a miry layer. So he keeps the map dry inside the coat pocket; Steve knows where he’s going for now anyway and his feet carry him onward. Passed the taverns and the last of the eateries, tailors, and stacked up residential buildings. Fallshire is an area of lower class, but should not be mistaken for the slums. That much is evident when Steve reaches the district gate on the western border.

A crumbling brick archway stands before him in fading glory. It looks like there used to be a gate that kept the zones from interweaving but the only traces that remain are holes in the pillars and the faint smell of stale metal. In centered text reads the fading paint, ‘Rosefall’.

There are a few street urchins that perch on top of the archway, legs dangling over as they yell obscenities at Steve. They wave around crude knives in clumsy grips as Steve passes underneath and enters the Rosefall district. His left foot sinks into a puddle and he curses, icy water squishing in his boot. He keeps walking. He knows he’ll take this road as far as it stretches and then a left down some unnamed side street. 

It’s uncomfortable, walking in the center of the road like this. But there are no carriages or automobiles down here. There are no walkers either. Inside the brick buildings that surround him, pangs and bangs echo along with thick thumps and cold laughter.

The slums of the west city are not like the slums Steve grew up in. In Hurstbane, he could name every beggar, thief and wanderer and they could name him back. They had stories and a saddened desperation to their movements. But here, the juxtaposing desolation of the streets and noisy brick structures makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t know the stories here. 

And being what he is helps in holding some of the fear at bay. Steve can defend himself now, but doing so would force him to reveal his magician nature. And in most parts of the world, that’s enough to put a noose around his neck. He hopes it won’t come to that, though.

He’s forced to unfold the map when several alleyways open up to his left. They all connect, at least that’s what the map shows so he turns left, peering into the sidestreet to make sure that he is alone. Splashing down the narrow passage, he squints at a marking on the wall. Near the corner of the alley, where it bends right, painted in black is the shape of a spider. Steve smiles a bit and nerves flutter in his belly. He takes the right turn as the rain lets up.

The passage winds downward on a slope. Right angle after right angle, two rights and a left and then two more lefts and two rights to reverse them. He stumbles down steps, boots clicking against stone and sending out slaps to all the boarded up windows around him. It’s a good sign, this twisting descent. It means he’s going the right way. The map is obsolete now, Steve can’t find any distinguishing features of the buildings around him or see anything familiar on the hand drawn map. Down it is. 

In the distance, a dull roar sounds. It reminds Steve of wind blowing through a forest. It grows louder the further he walks, until it sounds less like a singular noise and more like hundreds of noises piling on top of one another and Steve quickens.

Steve rounds the corner and walks into something warm and firm. A back. The man he smacked into turns, glances down at him with annoyance and turns back around. The passage is littered with people, all covered in grime and patched up clothing. Faces painted with tattoos and dirt. They all face the same way and don’t give Steve much of a look as he squeezes in between them to navigate further down the side street. 

These people reek. He pushes on and comes to the mouth of the alley. It opens into a wide, sunken square surrounded by intimidating and dilapidating brick buildings. And on the north side looms the abandoned Rosefall Asylum, menacing over the area like a mountain of crumbling stone, wood, and old brown brick. Everyone's cheering, fists raised and spitting and laughing with glee. Steve follows the direction everyone is facing, unable to see overtop of the crowd. Butting and shoving his way to the front, ears hurting from all the noise, the crowd finally parts to reveal a makeshift boxing ring.

Rotting ropes to make a square and two figures dancing around one another inside. Two figures throwing powerful punches at each other inside. Two women beating the shit out of each other inside.

Steve doesn’t know the rules of boxing but it looks like the redhead is winning. Her opponent is staggering, reflexes slow, eyes unfocused as she tries to stay on her feet. One more kick does it and she falls to the dirt, landing in a puffing heap. The crowd explodes. The redhead wipes the sweat from her forehead and waves at the crowd, no smile, no look of pride. They love it and cheer louder. Steve claps, too.

Some of the onlookers push Steve to the side as they encroach the ring. He allows himself to be swallowed by the howling throng of people and is maneuvered somewhere to the edge of the square. He gets spit out along with some other gang members who chatter in glee, arms around each others shoulders. 

Steve sticks out. Everyone else is veiled in shabby browns and blacks, patched up jackets with fraying seams. Coming from the Fallshire Heretics and all of their generosity, Steve is floral in comparison. Smelling of herbs and looking like a colorful carny in his plaid, he starts to earn looks now that the boxing match is over. Not ones of disgust, anger or warning, but ones of delight. Slight confusion before it turns into amusement. Sharp and silly smiles sent his way in the same manner one looks at pretty jewelry. 

The next Spider that catches his eye outright snorts at him and Steve has to fight the urge to glare. 

“Hey,” Steve says while walking towards the gang member. False confidence unwavering as he has to look upwards to maintain eye contact. The Spider smiles, yellow teeth spilling out of chapped lips.

“Hello.”

“I’m looking for Natasha Romanov.” Steve crosses his arms.

“And?” grins the Spider.

“Do you know where I can find her?” The Spider rolls his eyes, teeth retreating as the smile fades. He rotates on his heel, saunters away and scrambles up a brick ledge onto a parapet. He doesn’t cast another glance at Steve. Huffing, Steve approaches another gang member who sits smoking, lazily dragging a cigarette to her lips.

“I’m looking for Natasha Romanov.” 

“Fuck off.” 

Steve fucks off and marches up to a group of three Spiders leaning on a boarded up storefront. Their conversation stops when he joins their circle.

“I’m looking for Natasha Romanov.” One of them walks away, one of them laughs, and the other eyes Steve up and down.

“Well, aren’t you the cutest little thing?”

Steve sighs. “Do you know her?”

“Sure do.” The Spiders share an amused look.

“Great, where can I find her?” he snaps.

“My goodness, such impatience!” They giggle, no longer meeting his eye. After they stop laughing, they don’t answer his question. Steve inhales.

“Are you gonna tell me where I can find her?”

One of the pair decides she’s no longer entertained with the conversation and leaves. The one remaining gang member sticks a hand in his pocket and blinks at Steve in annoyance. “Why?” he exasperates. 

“Why what?”

“Why what, he says!” The Spider cackles. “Why do you need to find her, dipshit!”

Steve pushes down the frustration bubbling in his lungs. “I need to talk to her,” he says simply but sternly. The Spider frowns.

“Yeah,” he sighs and then walks off. Steve blinks after him with a tightly clenched jaw and fists. Can’t everyone else feel how important it is that he succeed in this? Being Steve Rogers, he then does something very brave yet a little bit stupid. Similarly to the first gang member to avoid his question, Steve hoists himself up onto a brick half-wall that overlooks the centered square where most of the crowd still congregates. Anger overtakes any fear of repercussions as Steve cups his hands around his mouth and yells.

“Hey!” It’s drawn out and loud enough to catch attention. It echoes off the buildings, noise circling back like a weighted whip and startling Steve himself at how angry he sounds. The faces that greet him are wildly varying in expression. “I’m looking for Natasha Romanov!” He pauses and everyone stares blankly. “I have business with her!” Pause. Some twitching of lips. “I need to know where she is right fucking now!”

He is lead eagerly after that to where the mysterious woman lounges. Steve is paraded across the square, through the now abandoned boxing ring and into a grimy pub. It’s the smallest pub he’s ever been in, it’s only narrow enough to fit three tables and a few cluttered chairs. Everyone inside is holding a bottle of beer in one fist and a hand of cards in the other. Steve recognizes the boxing champion straddled over a chair as she sets her beer down to collect the dice and roll them on the table. Steve advances on the claustrophobic card game.

The dice clatter down, she curses and hands a card to the man on her right. Steve clears his throat. No one looks up. The card game moves around another turn. Steve clears his throat again. No response. 

“Natasha Romanov?” He asks and her chin rises, she shakes ruby hair out of her eyes before squinting at Steve.

“What do you want? I’m busy.” Her eyes are back to the card game.

Steve’s eyes rake over the others in the pub, unsure of whether the implications of what he’s about to say will get him killed, or worse, reported. “I want to talk to you about resurrection, I hear you have experience.” Dice clatter prematurely and a player chokes on his beer. Gone is the friendly chatter of a casual card game. Natasha’s eyes are cold and unblinking, staring sharply at Steve and she’s frowning.

“Out.” She orders and Steve is about to retort with outrageous irritation when everyone else clambers for the door. Chairs scraping on the floor and card game left forfeited and tiny pub eerily deserted. Even the bartender slings a rag over her shoulder and saunters out. Steve stares back at Natasha, equally serious. “What’s your name?”

“Steve Rogers.”

“Take a seat, Steve Rogers.”


	2. Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter was like trying to coax a cat to go outside in the rain. And it probably shows, lmao sorry if this isn't very entertaining, it's a much needed filler chapter, though. Regardless, I hope you enjoy and please excuse the spelling/grammar mistakes!

“You play cards, Steve?” She asks, collecting the discarded piles on the table. Steve’s quiet in his chair, the tiny brickwork pub sucking all feeling out of him.

“Uh, no. Not really.” He doesn’t know what that has to do with resurrection. Natasha begins to shuffle. Through the streaky window, Spiders look in and watch every twitch Steve makes, every apprehensive stutter jumping out of his body. She catches him eyeing the onlookers and smiles.

“Don’t mind them,” she says and deals Steve a hand, her fingers turning into quick, pale carriage spokes. “Now, did you have something specific you wanted to discuss?” She picks up her cards and surveys them as she speaks. Steve leaves his own face down on the rickety table and chews his lip.

“Yes, I need to resurrect my friend. He’s been dead for a year.” Natasha’s expression doesn’t change. “I understand you’ve done this sort of thing before.” She nods.

“Play,” her fingers flick down to Steve’s deal.

“I’d rather not,” he hisses and she pulls her beer bottle from the floor to take a gulp. Steve is beginning to understand why she fits in so well with the rest of them. Evasive, unhelpful, detached. Devoted in contributing to Steve’s failure.

“Play a game of Saints and tell you what you want to know.”

Steve sighs and leans forward, scraping up his pile of cards. He hates cards. But he’ll play cards for Bucky. The game moves slowly, Natasha takes long turns to think over her moves, always taking a long sip out of her beer before finishing the play. When she finishes the first bottle, two are plucked from under the bar and she slides one over to Steve when returning to the table. Dusty glass makes it unfavorable to hold so he takes his sips as quickly as possible; he takes a little more time to decide his turns. It’s entirely silent except for bottles being lifted and clunked down, shifting in chairs and paper shuffles. And breathing. Deep inhales, slow exhales, coughs.

Steve thinks he’s finally met someone as stubborn as him.

He wins the first round. Loses the second. Loses the third. The game is over and Natasha’s snatching the cards back into a singular pile. “Well, Steve Rogers. What can I help you with?”

“How do I do it?” The words rush out.

“Bring someone back?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t.”

Steve yanks the cards from her grip and stands to kick her beer bottle out of her reach. It hits the wall with a sad smash and Steve feels like a child throwing a tantrum. He returns to his seat and leans forward, pointing a finger in Natasha’s unreadable face. “Listen to me.” Her eyebrows move marginally. “I’m out of patience. I’m out of options. I need my friend back, I need to know how it’s done. It’s my fault that he’s dead and I need to make things right, I’ll do anything to fix what I fucked up. They said Scarlet Witch could help, she said she can’t. She said you could help me, you say you can’t. I’m at the end of the fucking rope! One of you is lying and I don’t think it’s Wanda so I’m not leaving until I get what I came for, you understand?”

Natasha’s eyebrows knit together. “Wanda sent you?”

Steve rubs at his eyes. In his frustration he had forgotten to mention it, and by the change in Natasha’s cocky demeanor, maybe he should have remembered sooner. She pulls in on herself, no longer relaxed. Steve unsheathes the knife from his boot and lets it clatter on the table.

“From her,” he barks. She stares at the dagger, frown softening and takes it in hand, studying the markings and craftsmanship. When she’s done, Natasha stashes it in her own boot and rests her chin in her palm, elbow on the sticky table.

“We have a lot to talk about if you want to go through with this.”

Steve gapes. “Yes, that’s- that’s what I want. So, it can be done then?”

“Yes.”

They are still being watched through the window, Steve learns to ignore them and arranges himself more comfortably in the chair. “What do I need to do?”

Natasha reflects his own determination with alarming accuracy and added sorrow. She sighs. “You need the blood of an old god.” He’s waiting for her to crack a smile or raise an eyebrow and a breathy chuckle slips out of Steve’s mouth. Then he shakes his head. “What, you don’t believe in gods?” 

Steve blinks. “I don’t know, I guess I believe that they exists in some sense. But I don’t believe that...that they bleed. That they have bodies and blood.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t either until I saw everything.” Her voice cushions. “Are you familiar with the tombs? The catacombs under the city?” 

Steve shrugs with a slight nod. “I’ve heard of them.”

“Well, if you go down far enough, you can find an old chamber where rituals were held. You know, centuries ago. And in that chamber, there’s a basin of very old blood that you’ll use in your resurrection ceremony. You don’t believe me.” Natasha laughs at Steve’s frown. 

He scratches at his chin. “No, no, I do. Go on, what do I do with the blood?”

“Perform a ceremony. Oh, you’ll need a witch.”

“I am a witch,” he says and her eyebrow raises. “But I don’t know any ceremonies.”

“You just need to paint a sigil on the floor, mumble some magic words. Do whatever your kind does. But…” Natasha’s eyes fog over as she looks past Steve. “But this isn’t easy, Steve. And your friend won’t be brought back in the way you’re expecting.”

His eyes move from one side of the room to the other, thinking on what it could mean. “Well, I know. No one ever comes back the same, really,” Steve muses.

“No,” she’s shaking her head. “I need to tell you a story. Do you smoke?” Natasha asks, flipping open a carton of cigarettes. Steve waves the offer but notices how her hands are shaking as she flips and strikes the lighter. When she looks at Steve again, her eyes move through him.

What a story she tells. About a gang war and catacombs and a bounty hunter. A story about how three very different people from three very different walks of life allied themselves to bring Nicholas Fury back from the dead. A story about a boy named Pietro Maximoff who died saving Clint Barton and how they left his body to rot in the catacombs.

“Once Barton and I reached the chamber, we had to decide if we were going to bring Fury back or Maximoff. We went down there for Fury, so we chose Fury.” Natasha takes a drag and the plume of smoke instead of drifting up and out, plummets in a tapered collapse. “Since Pietro was the witch of our group, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We followed the shapes you’re supposed to make and read the words you’re supposed to say, but...ultimately, we were just a criminal and a bounty hunter. Not a bit of magic in us. Maybe that’s why everything got fucked up, or maybe it’s just the nature of those kind of things.”

She exhales again and the smoke from her lips descends to add another layer of filth atop the table. “It worked, the gods brought Fury back.” Steve stays quiet. Natasha’s eyes are shiny, soupy and looking everywhere but Steve. “Not right there, not right away, though. We thought it didn’t work and got out of the tombs thinking that we failed...” She blows more smoke. “Until I saw him selling shoes in Mearley a week later.”

Steve leans forward and frowns. “What do you mean?”

“The Nicholas Fury that came back wasn’t ours. He’d been a shoe maker his whole life, lived along the river, in Mearley. Never met a Natasha Romanov.” In her voice, Steve hears the clinking of gears that want to spin but can’t. Her removed demeanor cracks for only a second before her eyes snap back together and up from the table to Steve in a scutter.

“Would you still bring you friend back if you knew he wouldn’t be yours?” She asks. 

“Yes! Of course I would, he deserves a life!”

“And he had one.”

When Steve doesn’t answer within a few seconds, Natasha stamps out what’s left of her cigarette and stands. She kicks the leg of his chair. “Think on it, Steve. I mean it. Then come find me when you have your answer.”

 

⇟

 

When the rain starts back up again, it soaks into his feathers and makes his tiny bones flinch. He flits through alleys and side streets, up into the drizzle. Steve’s never been afraid of heights; he enjoys watching the city twist beneath him as he sails over Rosefall and back into Fallshire. Carriages splashing over cobble and beggars dripping as they barter for coin. And then, harvest orange tent tops and purpling canvas, emerald ribbon banners and rubied string entwined with tanzanite, too. All vibrating in the rain together like an orchestra of puppets.

Steve soars past the busy courtyard of witches and heads for a grand cathedral. He doesn’t find any peace from attending church services but the dignified architecture always sings a song of nostalgia. Up there in the north, his home region where Hurstbane sits bloody and claustrophobic, churches scattered the landscape like teeth in the gums. Mighty and then shabby houses of faith rowing coastline to forest dread.

The white crow lands in a condense hammer of body on cobble, bones all unfolding and clicking into place as his stride connects with a mechanical swoop. In the hiddens of between-men, his unbroken transformation is missed by all. He’s perfected this movement; smooth and silent like gaseous marbles. Steve shakes wet hair from his eyes and marches for the harbor as the lamplighters stilt walk down roadside, hunchbacked and glowing. 

The Church of Saint Omission welcomes Steve with velvet pews and high rising stained glass. Lights off the harbor bleed through the colored glass and Steve steers away from the few churchgoers who sit perched up front, palms together and rocking. 

He sits in the rear and thinks about Bucky. 

Steve had previously thought that he would do whatever it takes to revive his friend. If that meant tunneling through ancient catacombs where the laws of time and space surrendered, then that was that, right? He’d do it. It’s what Bucky deserves. Steve reaches in his shirt to fiddle with Bucky’s old name plate that we wore so very proudly on his rifle. He keeps it looped on two strings around his neck just in case one were to snap. 

He thinks about Bucky existing without him. Not knowing who Steve Rogers is. Selfishly, the thought hurts more than the thought of Bucky being dead and his chest squeezes up on his heart which is just not punishment enough. My god, he misses Bucky. He knows there’s no real thinking to do about it, Steve’s known from the second Bucky’s heart stopped beating that he would find a way to bring him back. 

The way Natasha talks about the tombs is something to consider. She belongs to one of the most violent and heartless gangs in the world, and the shaking of her hands burns Steve’s memory. She didn’t name any details of what they saw down in the dark, but she gave herself away. Strange, unnatural things like the things that haunt Hurstbane. The things that helped drive Bucky to his suicide. Steve will face these things and feel no sympathy for himself, he’s made his decision and his rib cage tightens in fear, thoracic cavity one big tangle now as he runs his finger over the engraving initials, J.B.B.

He’s able to scrape up enough coin for another night at the inn. He undresses and lays his clothing out over the small desk and chair to dry for the night while he sleeps. Dreams don’t appear to Steve like they used to; now they’re more like quick taps of spoons on the backs of knees, barely there but specific. It’s always one of two things he dreams about, Bucky or witchcraft. Tonight, it’s a horrifying mess of both.

 

⇟

 

The ladder sways as he climbs, it bends with his weight and then stills. Puzzled, Steve looks down to see a Spider holding the ladder steady. Certainly different treatment than yesterday. He shouts a thanks and continues his ascent to the top of the building where Natasha sits with her legs dangling off the edge. The view is dusty brick and smoke stacks. He sinks down next to her.

“I’m going to go. I’m going to bring Bucky back,” he says softly. Almost apologetically. He wants Natasha to know that he registers her fear and pays it the respect it commands. She nods.

“Yeah, I thought that would be your answer.” She watches the smoke stacks rise and Steve grins. 

“So, when can we go?”

Natasha whips around to face him, dangling feet stilling. “We?” And Steve’s smile fades.

“Yes, we. I thought that’s what you meant when you said you’d help me,” stammers Steve.

“No, I’ll tell you how to get into the tombs and give you some tips on how to survive them, but I’m not coming with you, Steve.”

“So, what?” Steve scratches the back of his head. “I go alone, then?” Natasha hurridley grabs his hand and then just as quickly lets go.

“No.”

“Can’t you ask some of your friends go with me?”

“I’d be sending them to their death,” she shakes her head and Steve’s eyebrows rise. “You need something to stay sane for down there, for you, it’ll be your friend. But do not go alone.”

Steve throws up his hands. “I don’t have anyone! And I’m not paying mercenaries, not if it’s as dangerous as you’re making it sound. Natasha, you’ve done this before. You can guide me,” she’s shaking her head. “You owe Wanda.” Steve says coldly. Natasha looks at him with narrowed eyes and clenched fists.

“I don’t owe Wanda anything, Pietro made his choice.”

“Then why did I have to mention her name to get you to talk to me. What does that mean, huh?” Steve recognizes the anger masked guilt in her eyes. “No one’s asking for you to bring Pietro back so your guilt is just sitting there, but I can do something about mine! Maybe it’ll help yours, too.”

“I don’t have a fucking guilt complex! I refuse to go back down there because I’m afraid of the things I saw.” Natasha grits her teeth.

“I’m afraid, too!” yells Steve. “What do you want? What do you need? I’ll get it for you, if you come with me. Please!” He knows well from yesterday that the Spiders don’t like to be asked things but fucking hell, he’s desperate.

Natasha laughs. “This isn’t a trade-”

“Guns.” Steve blurts. “You guys don’t have guns. You have knives but no guns!” Natasha is squinting at him, chewing on her lip.

“You can get me guns?” She asks in disbelief.

“I know Tony Stark, the. The gunsmith!” Steve wants to kick himself, he’s met the man once and is certainly no friend. “I can get you guns. If...you come with me.”

Natasha’s calculating. The smoke stacks blow black smog all around them and it sticks to their clothes. “How many guns? What kind of guns?”

“Rifles and however many you need.”

Sighing, Natasha looks below at the square of gang members milling around. Steve knows other gangs in the city are beginning to acquire firearms; soon, the Spiders will have to fight an uphill battle to keep their place. It’s a reality he’s sure Natasha is aware of.

“Deal.” She breathes.

“Bucky first.”

“Guns first.”

“Get me through the catacombs alive and I’ll get your guns.” Steve stares hard and cold, shoulders square with a promise he can’t keep. All that matters right now is bringing Bucky back to life. Natasha blinks a couple times, her shoulders sagging and mouth pulling down.

“Fine,” she croaks. And then she stands and beckons for Steve to follow. He scrambles to his feet and waits until he’s in the clear to descend the ladder after Natasha. She holds it steady when she reaches the bottom.

 

⇟

 

A thick, brown leather jacket hits Steve in the chest as he leans against the carriage waiting for Natasha’s return. He catches it before it can drop and gives Natasha a look.

“What’s this?” he asks. 

“We’re gonna be doing lots of crawling in the catacombs. Your elbows will need something sturdier than what you’ve got.” She thumbs his flimsy collar with a crinkled nose. “Get in, c’mon.” She turns to the driver with her arms crossed, tells her their destination and steps into the stagecoach after Steve. He’s paler than usual.

“You alright?”

Steve looks at her as if to confirm that the question is addressed to him. “Me? Yes, I’m fine. I just didn’t think we’d be leaving so soon.”

“There’s no time like the present,” Natasha flashes the briefest of smiles. “Steve,” she turns serious. He hums. “I’m serious about the guns.” The stagecoach begins moving and Steve’s head is pulled back against the cushion. Natasha stays in place.

“I know,” he mumbles.

“As long as you understand that.” She crosses her legs and starts to pick at the dirt under her nails. The carriage floor holds a spool of thick rope and a couple of metal hooks. Steve had asked what they were for exactly but Natasha ignored his question. She also ignored it when he pointed out that they’d no food or water. They aren’t friends, but Steve trusts Natasha; she’s got the disposition of a foreman and since Steve has never worked in a factory himself, he feels that foremen are people of the utmost moral conduct. 

They’re bumping along now, fog sitting outside the windows. Steve looks out and watches the streets pass by in a grungy, dreamy flipbook. 

“It’ll take a while to get there,” Natasha says, their eyes meeting. “Two hours or so. I’d try to rest if I were you.” They hold each other’s eyes for a moment in shared unexcitement for what’s to come. Steve purses his lips and nods slowly, head falling back and eyes shutting. His eyelids twitch though, like his body won’t let him close them for an entire second and they show pictures of Bucky in a mix of forms, bloody and not. Alive and not. 

Steve falls into an uneasy sleep as the dirt covered carriage passes through gaslight streets, steering through fog and Natasha trembles only once she sees the even rise and fall of Steve’s chest.


	3. Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Steven :(  
> Please excuse grammar/spelling mistakes and I hope you enjoy!

McIntire-Sweet Swinery sits leaning and salty along the edge of the meatmarket on the river. Natasha kicks the door open, one hand in her pocket and the other gripping the spool of rope. Steve follows her into the sagging butchery looking like he just woke up. The smell of tightly packed blood and screaming buzzsaws jolts Steve into a gag and makes his eyes water. He catches Natasha’s eye.

“Did I forget to tell you to hold your breath?” she asks, smiling and guiding him through the line of customers and towards the rear. All sorts of pig parts sit piled up on glass platters, pink and runny and waiting for shoppers to point at them. Natasha leads him past the counter and through a set of doors where blood splattered butchers hack away at hanging pig carcasses. Their whirring blades slice through meat slowly and neatly, inviting streams of blood to pour onto the tile floor and slick towards the drain in the center of the room. Steve’s shoes stick as they wade through coagulating puddles.

The butchers give them looks, saws moving with precision as Natasha strides forward, through the miserable room and stops when they reach a rusting cellar door at the back wall. All eyes are on them; one by one, the saws wind down and dripping blood splats on tile. 

“My friend and I need to get in here,” Natasha announces and stomps a boot on the door. Some flakes of rust scratch off of the great chain that weaves in between the handles. “Mind helping us out?”

The butchers all share a glance, lips pulled tight and eyes wide. “I don’t think you want to go down there, Miss,” says one of them. 

“Who has the key?”

None of them speak up. Just the drip-dropping of pig blood. Natasha rolls her eyes and turns to Steve, expectantly.

“What?” he asks.

“You said you’re a witch,” she shrugs. “Can’t you open it?” Around them, the butchers shuffle a bit at the mention of witchcraft. Steve gapes at her nonchalance; sentences like that are more dangerous than bullets and Steve accidentally locks eyes with a scowling butcher.

Steve then looks down at the hulking, fist-sized lock and exhales. “Uh, I’ve never tried anything like that before.” He mumbles, not wanting the others to hear more than they already have. 

He then allows the energy that sits on his skin to be swallowed. Static impulses in the air zip into Steve’s belly and up his ribs to settle in his collar bones. He kneels. Stapling his palm overtop the lock, he speaks strange syllables that jump from his tongue and into the universe. Under the skin of his palm, the metal shifts. One of he butchers starts threatening to report them, to step outside the shop and call for the Watch. Another returns to hacking away at a carcass, not wanting to be involved in this heretical business and the buzzing of the saw blankets Steve’s words.

The lock pops off. Steve’s eyes are alight with adrenaline and unholiness, he’s grinning and Natasha’s grinning back. “Not bad,” she says and opens the door. “Quickly.”

The butcher is setting down his saw, moving across the room towards the front shop with the intention of following up on his threat of reporting them. But it doesn’t matter much because Natasha steps down into the dark hole in the back of McIntire-Sweet Swinery and grabs Steve’s hand and yanks. He goes tumbling down the stone stairs, catching himself with wicked reflexes as Natasha slams the cellar doors shut behind them. There’s just enough light for her to thread the rusting chain through the inside handles and click that monstrous lock in place. 

The clicking of the mechanism slams into Steve and knocks him down another step. Natasha blows a piece of hair from her face and looks at Steve while the whining of buzzsaws ricochets on the cellar door; there’s something similar to concern in her eyes.

“C’mere.” She says but walks towards him instead. Using the knife from her boot, she slices a portion of the rope and slots the remaining coil across her torso. Steve stays still as Natasha ties them together by the belts, making sure there’s enough slack for them to move comfortably. 

“Is this necessary?” Steve asks. Natasha sighs and pulls out another knife from her thigh holster, this one much plainer than the gift from Wanda. She hands it to Steve.

“Yes. It’ll try to separate us. Take the knife, I know you’re a witch but it’ll make me feel better.” Her voice is steady but her hands shake slightly. Steve accepts the dagger, slots it in his boot, and squares his shoulders. The two of them are on the cusp of something, he can feel it. And maybe Natasha can, too and that’s why she’s no longer the aloof Spider boxing champion sitting in a pub and winning all the bets. There are an awful lot of unknowns here on this staircase with yelling, and saws and blood dripping above the two of them and more blood below them. It’s strange. To Steve, how much like home this feels.

He and Natasha exchange no words, no nods, no nothing. They just start moving down the staircase in the dark. The downward sloping hallway is an eerily perfect square, accomplished by an architect no doubt with peeling gold rims on the edge of each step, a ceremonial flare in contrast to the lumbering butchery above. It makes everything a reality for Steve. 

Suddenly, his brain is somewhere deep in his body, cowering in a non-cranial cavity. His limbs aren’t his own and his eyes can’t come into focus. The darkness is heavy around him and his slim fingers titter to the rope that tethers him to Natasha and his clings to it. Steve is risking his life and his sanity for this promiseless quest. For a chance for Bucky. His jaws come grinding together and his fingers fall from the scratchy rope and hang sweating at his sides as he pushes forward. For Bucky.

 

⇟

 

Their footfalls echo off the walls and Steve is surprised by the visibility of everything. With no torches, lanterns, or candles, the only light that comes to them is the faint greenish glow of luminous mushrooms that peek out from cracks in the walls. Their glow reflects in the golden trim of the staircase so faintly that Steve thinks he might be making it up. Natasha steps further down behind him, breathing quiet.

They reach the last step. Steve places his foot from stone stair onto dirt and notices that the walls curve and crumble from the pointed square of a designed hallway to a crude carved opening, just tall enough to stand in. He waits for Natasha at the bottom who is only three steps behind him, but it just feels right to wait. It seems this is the end of civilization. The termination of gold trimmed stairs that provide even a small bit of incandescent comfort marks an entryway to an unmapped domain and holds a hand up to Steve’s chest, telling him to wait and consider.

Besides him now, Natasha stands close. She presses her shoulder to his in encouragement and gives a nod. They take the first step into the tombs not as identical but parallel souls: curious, frightened, and determined.

Walking for several hours takes them through many turns. Natasha chalks white arrows, pointing in the direction they approach the corners from so that they can find their way out. Steve’s feet are beginning to ache. He welcomes the sensation and lets it fuel him. Right now, the fear is bearable. It can be pushed down and ignored with naivety. Like Bucky had been doing those first few weeks as a Watchman. It will grow and manifest the more they walk, each step forward a growing shadow not yet indistinguishable from the dark on the walls and Steve is okay with this. 

They walk for many more hours before Natasha tells him to halt. 

“We should stop here for today,” Natasha says looking at her pocket watch. “We’re seven and a half hours deep. It’s eight o’clock now.”

Steve clicks his tongue. “Shouldn’t we keep going while we have energy, though?” Natasha shakes her head and leans back on the catacomb wall. It’s only now that Steve realizes that he can hardly see her; only her outline rests in front of him. The glowing mushrooms are more sparsely placed and the sudden darkness sends a chill down his spine.

“Uh, okay.” Steve slowly lowers himself to the ground to sit. His knees crack as they bend. “So...no food or water, I noticed. You didn’t answer me before when I asked about it.”

Natasha stretches her own legs. “Was that a statement or are you trying to ask me a question?” Steve sighs.

“Why don’t we have any supplies?”

“Don’t need them,” Natasha shrugs. Steve isn’t thirsty. He’s not hungry. And Natasha has done this before. “Brought huge bags of food the first time, and canteens of water. Threw it all up every time our bodies tried to digest it. Once we figured that out, we picked a spot and left all our shit there,” she says, head tilting like she still finds it curious.

When she tells Steve this, his fingers twitch oddly. Strange information.

Steve copies Natasha when she rests her head against the wall and closes her eyes. He stays like that for a while, slipping closer and closer to sleep but doesn’t fall all the way. Shuffling around doesn’t help, the ground is cold and hard and the air heavy. He sighs, screaming at his brain to please, please get some rest. Doesn’t he know that he’s going to need it? 

“Can’t sleep either,” comes Natasha’s voice, gravely.

“You can’t sleep either?”

“No, I mean _down here_ we can’t sleep. Just like eating, or drinking, or pissing. Can’t get physically tired.” Her eyes are still shut and she sounds sad. Steve gulps.

“Oh,” he breathes.

“Just try to rest as best as you can, we’ll start back up soon. If you keep walking for too long, you’ll go fucking crazy.”

Steve just stares at her after she says this. Out of all the things she’s told about this place, this short conversation frightens him the most. It sounds like something she regrets to admit, not in the same way a secret does but rather like an ominous statistic. Fact. He eventually forces his eyes shut and his head back and focuses on breathing. 

 

⇟

 

Steve keeps his fear at bay until a full day later when he has to pause mid stride to get a better listen of the voices in the distance. Natasha notices the noises at the same time he does and she grabs his hand to alert him. They look at one another in the dim light of green flora, straining to hear.

The voices carry a conversation, all words completely unidentifiable but the manner of the communication is light and hurried. Playful, and breathy. It comes closer from the end of the darkened corridor and Natasha presses Steve to the wall before flattening herself out next to him. His eyes beg her, “tell me what’s happening,” and her eyes scream back “not now.” The voices advance, now accompanied by thundering footsteps. At least two individuals stomping towards them, Steve’s sure of it.

A sinking of his stomach tells Steve that something is wrong before his brain can process it fully. One of the voices is Bucky’s. His blood runs cold, he’d know that voice anywhere. Steve whimpers as his knees buckle and Natasha clamps a hand over his mouth hard and her other hand grips his shoulder in both warning and console. She’s done this before. 

The voices come closer still. Fragments of conversation are audible now, speaking words that Steve can understand but still the sentences are incomprehensible. 

“Trickery of the sun, a sublime swamp but still only three of them are.”

“Oh, for certain they’ll around!” says the second voice. That one’s familiar, too. Steve feels like he should be able to place it by now but he’s still frozen by the sound of Bucky’s voice. It’s been over a year.

“Well, you’ve got to living at a time before, if I’m being truthful,” says Bucky.

“No, no. You just lost a glory second best,” laughs his companion.

They get closer, Steve can hear the rumpling of their clothing.

“Without a cigar and never as equal a lot of the time goes ribbon, Stevie. You know that.”

_Huh._

Steve recognizes his own laugh bubble up from somewhere that isn’t his own chest and echo in the dark where he doesn’t stand. He makes another sound against Natasha’s palm and she’s holding her breath, so still, hands on Steve so tight. He’s dizzy against the wall. The voices continue to babble nonsense, _he and Bucky_ continue to babble nonsense, each syllable a knife to Steve’s throat and his eyes are tearing, his heart breaking.

They get closer, Natasha holds him against the wall in the dark, begging him to stay quiet and still. 

Steve plans on shutting his eyes when the voices get any closer. But it’s a very hard thing to do. He doesn’t want to see what horrible things these tombs have conjured up to paralyze and destroy him, but my god, it’s Bucky. That’s Bucky’s voice. He needs to see.

And then nothing. All sounds cease with a reversed shatter that seems to grab at noise and then swallow it whole. Steve stiffens, expecting a finale of some sort. Natasha exhales and her shoulders relax. She peels the hand away from Steve’s mouth but her other rubs small circles on his bicep. Steve can’t move and she takes his other arm in hand too, so she can face him properly.

“Steve?” she asks softly. He’s trying to form words, his eyes searching hers wildly for answers.

“That, that. Was Bucky. That was Bucky, and. Me. Natasha, that-”

“I know, Steve,” she says, cold and swift. He’s panting, throat closing up. 

“Bucky!” Steve screams, mania crawling up his throat. He backs out of Natasha’s grasp with a jerk and searches the corridor with frenzied desperation. “Bucky!” He yells again, starting to run. His sudden movements cause the rope hooking the two together to pull and yank on Natasha’s belt; she stumbles.

“Steve, stop it!”

“I’m here, Buck! Where are you!”

She tries digging her heels into the ground, bending her knees and pulling on the rope but Steve won’t stop trying to run. She watches him flail around with a heavy heart, knowing first hand what it’s like to hear treasured voices. 

“Steve, it’s not real!” With a strong tug, she reels Steve in a few feet as he goes wavering backwards, hands in the air trying to catch something. His heart pounds erratically in his chest and his throat is so narrow he’s shocked that any air at all is moving through it. 

“Buck!” Steve cries again, tripping over his own foot in the dark and falling backwards at Natasha’s feet. It makes her chest ache, the way Steve’s eyes are alive with fever and searching. He doesn’t try to get up and run again, he just pulls himself to his feet, leans against the wall and pukes. Steve’s got one hand supporting himself on the cold cave wall as strange shapes are pulled from his stomach up his throat and topple off his tongue to splat on the ground.

Bird fetuses all pink and squirming make a pile underneath him and Steve screws his eyes shut. Natasha gasps beside him and takes a step backward. Steve is pulled from these tombs into a memory of a brick alleyway, smelling of burnt hair and wet animal and blood. He coughs up more slimy and wriggling things in agony, waiting to be done.

Steve uses a knuckle to wipe at his mouth when he feels like he’s finished and says nothing to Natasha. She says nothing to him but she’s staring at the mass of moving and unborn creatures by Steve’s feet and holds her hand halfway to her mouth in an unfinished gasp. She says nothing still as Steve starts stomping on the bird-bile, cracking their partially formed bones and skins with sickening, wet crunches and he’s grunting with each downward swing of his boot. He doesn’t stop until his black boot turns coppery brown and all that’s left is a paste of pink and red. Steve pants.

He turns to Natasha. “Let’s go,” he growls. His voice is deeper than she’s ever heard, his eyes cold and hard before he spins on his heel and begins marching forward. Ever since their first meeting, Natasha sensed determination in him. Incredible bravery. Desperate, unstable, _unnatural_ bravery that was slowly becoming uncorked. Steve feels the transfer of energy inside himself, from follower to leader down in the catacombs. Natasha may have done this before, but it’s Steve who wants this, who needs this. 

The concoction of adrenaline, fear, and desperation makes Steve feel like he’s wearing a suit of armor. His fingernails humming, gums droning and throbbing. Magic just under the surface of his skin and it infects Natasha, too. The two of them reach the end of the long stretched hallway and make a left, Natasha chalking a mark and moving on. They wind around and down, through corridor after corridor with newly established speed and craze, hardly noticing the slowly growing darkness around them and distant echoes.

 

⇟

 

The hysteria does wear off. After an hour maybe. And then three days go by of walking and resting, walking and resting. Walking and resting. All light has ceased to exist down here and Steve and Natasha must move with a hand reaching out along the wall to know where hallways start and stop. Things swim in and out of the darkness, the brain providing stimulus where there is none until it becomes unbearable and they have to sit down, hands over their eyes and shaking.

“Light, please. Natasha, please.” Steve mutters and stutters it out as they sit shoulder to shoulder. She digs in her pocket and flicks the lighter to life. The both of them let out a happy sigh to have sight of their own hands again. It’s become routine. They walk for hours in cramped, unearthly blackness until they can’t take it any longer, then they sit in the glow of a humble flame until Natasha deems that they’ve used up enough oil and she flicks it shut. Whenever they rest, Steve always makes sure that they are touching in some way. Boots hooked around one another’s, shoulders leaning against each other, a hand placed on a leg, there always needs to be something additional to a fraying rope that tethers them together. 

They need that feeling, otherwise they’d be alone.

They start walking again. They walk. And walk. And walk.

“Natasha?” They keep moving, hands on the wall, looking at nothing.

“Yeah?”

“We haven’t made any turns since yesterday.”

“I know. That’s a good thing,” comes from behind Steve.

“Does that mean we’re getting close?” he asks, tired hope in his voice. The childish tilt of the question almost sounds like self-mockery.

“Just keep walking.”

He does. In the dark nothingness of the tombs, there’s very little to think about. Steve’s thoughts always return to Bucky Barnes. He’s never far from Steve’s thoughts, but in his year long journey, he’s been so busy hunting down information that he didn’t give himself much time to mourn. He has lots of time now. Natasha pretends not to hear him sniffle and he’s grateful that she can’t see his red eyes. 

They walk another day down the long corridor without turning. It eats at Steve in a way he can’t place. 

“I fucking hate this.” he says, just to say something. 

“Me too.” 

“Was it like this when you came down here?” Steve asks. Natasha takes a few seconds to answer.

“No,” she laments. “Well, some of it was. We heard voices, too. And found a hallway like this one, but. By this point last time, we had already lost Pietro.”

“Oh.”

“We were attacked by some sort of witch things. I don’t know if they were human or not, it didn’t really matter.” Her voice adopts a weight that Steve hasn’t heard her carry. “We kept killing them as they came. One at a time, but it went on for days. There’d be a noise, like something running towards you, bare feet running on stone and you couldn’t see. Our lanterns burnt out, we’d just slash around in the dark, whoever was up front would hit it, there’d be slicing and grunting. And it went like that. For days until one of them got Pietro when he’d stepped in front of Clint,” she finishes lamely. It’s the most Steve’s heard her talk since they entered into the tombs. “God, I’d kill for a cigarette right now.”

“You didn’t think to warn me about that kind of thing until now? Fucking _witch-things_?” Steve snaps, hand gliding on stone wall.

“No, you were scared enough. So, I’m telling you now, if we hear one, move to the side and let me take care of it,” Natasha sounds-like-she-shrugs. Steve doesn’t offer a response, he just keeps walking.

They spend another day walking in a straight line further down the very same passageway. Steve feels a little bit hope left behind with each footprint he leaves and he drags his boots along, hand sagging against the wall; eyes closing as they amble forward in a miserable trance. He doesn’t know how long he walks like that but it feels like hours. His throat is closing and eyes filling with tears, he hates this. He hates this. His bones are lead inside his loose skin, everything pulling downward around him, lungs hurt to inflate and eyes sting whenever they open. He hates this.

“Steve,” Natasha whispers. He hums. “Steve, do you hear that?” He pauses and she walks into him, stumbling lazily.

There’s a noise coming from behind them. Thick, wet slapping of flesh on stone in a tangled sprint, labored breathing and before Steve can turn around, Natasha slams him into the wall, shoulder blades hitting tomb wall with a grunt. It’s all blackness but still Steve’s eyes search for the source of noise. Natasha’s lighter flicks to life in a chipped syllable and he other hands darts for the knife in her boot.

Then the thing is upon them. It’s a writhing beast with too many arms and mouths and no eyes, all skinned over joints lurching forward on Natasha. Her dagger rips through the creature and it screams, several mouths opening and howling in the unstable yellow glow. Natasha pulls back and stabs again, pulling down on the handle and letting the witch-animal’s skin pull apart as it shrieks. Steve is immobilized against cold rock as Natasha strikes a third time, a final cry emanating and echoing in the dark as the lighter is shut off and restashed in its proper place.

Natasha is out of breath. She wipes the dagger on her pant leg and feels for Steve who still is flat against the wall.

“You alright?” She loops her hand around his wrist. Steve’s lips move as he stutters out sounds not fully formed, he clears his throat.

“Yeah, just give me a minute, would you?” So, they stand there in the dark until breaths are even again and Steve doesn’t feel like he’ll fall if he takes a step. Natasha removes her hand from him and falls into step as Steve starts to lead them forward again.

Another two days pass of walking in a straight line, a fucking straight line, how much further can this exist? Steve’s ears pick up every distant noise, every footfall, every echo as they’re barraged by awful creatures from both ends. It always starts with the running towards them. After the third time it happens, Steve flattens himself out on the wall without Natasha having to force him there. He watches as she rips them apart, mechanically and with rage, she knows how to dismember them easy. She’s done this before, after all.

 

⇟

 

He’s trudging along in a shaking daze, fingernails scraping the stone wall and grinding them down to stubs as energy falters to keep his hand out straight. Steve thought he knew fear but he was wrong. This is more than fear; it’s dread.

His nails catch on something that crinkles lightly. It’s loud in the shared silence. He knows Natasha has stopped behind him because she doesn’t walk into him like she normally does if he stops unexpectedly. Steve’s fingers move over the object on the wall and he frowns. It’s paper. A piece of paper.

“Nat, light.”

She looks just as confused as he does as she brings the flame up to where Steve’s hand rests. Parchment nailed to the wall. Steve’s eyes widen as he takes in the scrawl. It reads,

_Stevie  
They’re going to cut me open like you were I don’t think I can make it through that you have to help me please Steve you have to hurry because I don’t have a lot of time I’m praying you find this note and hurry_

“Fuck.” Steve inhales and rips the note from the wall, reading it again. It’s Bucky’s handwriting, but it can’t be real. It’s not real. It feels real. Natasha takes the paper from his hands and reads it over quickly. Then she holds it over her lighter and lets the corner dip into flame. Steve exclaims, it’s a note from Bucky! She can’t burn it, it’s not real, it’s not a note from Bucky.

Or maybe it is. My god, what if it is. Natasha drops the burning paper to the ground where it turns to ash.

“You know it’s not real.” Natasha meets his eye. Steve nods, she flicks the lighter off, and they continue on.

They walk for another couple minutes. Crinkle. Steve’s fingers hit another note.

“Nat, light.”

“No.”

“Please,” his voice cracks. 

This one reads,

_Stevie,  
Hurry please god you need to hurry I miss you I’m sorry for dying they’re going to kill..._

It says more but from her position besides Steve, Natasha stops reading at the ‘I’m sorry for dying’, she just swiftly flicks off the lighter. Steve doesn’t need to read this. 

“What the fuck!?” Steve seethes, hand reaching for Natasha’s lighter, fingers feeling for it and pulling. “C’mon, let me read it Natasha, please!” But she’s already moving away, putting the lighter back in her pocket.

“No more notes,” she says.

“Nat…” Steve sounds so broken, so tired that she almost gives in.

“No more notes, Steve.”

They’re resting. Hours later with heads leaning back on the wall, knees bent and touching, arms hooked together in the pitch black. Only a few minutes has gone by when he hears it. Steve’s head comes forward and his eyes open even though he knows he won’t see anything and Natasha shifts in place.

It’s telescopic. So far in the distance, it holds no danger of posing a threat. And much too human to be anything else. A voice is screaming. Terror filled, agonized wails that start and stop with no followable pattern and Steve crumbles. Of course it’s Bucky screaming, those cries of pain and terror so familiar to Steve from all the nights spent waking his friend from the bloody nightmares he would dream up. Thinking of those homely, cold, poverty stricken memories hurts. It seems a fictional paradise in a place like this.

Bucky’s screaming continues and Steve flounders for Natasha’s hand. When he finds it, he laces their fingers together and squeezes, tears gathering below his eyes. He knows the screaming isn’t real, or maybe it’s real but it’s meaningless. 

“I hate this.” Steve’s voice breaks, he hiccups into a sob. Natasha’s hand squeezes back.

“I know.”

“Why me? Why…” Steve cuffs a sniffle.

“Why what, Steve?”

He leans his head on her shoulder. “Why is it going after me?” Natasha sighs and presses her cheek to Steve’s temple. It feels nice, the sad intimacy. Natasha isn’t as warm or familiar or big as Bucky but it’s still nice.

“I think it knows that you’re the one who has business here.” Bucky howls in the dark between sentences. “I know what it’s like, Steve. I’m sorry it’s come to this...But you chose to come down here.”

Tears fall and Steve closes his eyes, his nose is stuffing up and he’s more than halfway to sobbing.

“Why’d you let me? If you knew it was this bad, why’d you let me?” he asks as Natasha’s fingers start to run through his hair. He sighs into it, feeling like the youngest, _stupidest_ child.

“For your friend, remember? You’re going to bring back your friend.”

“Bucky, his name is Bucky. Stop calling him my friend, you never say his name. He’s a person, he’s Bucky,” Steve heaves, suddenly angry at the scary, unfair world.

“You’re going to bring back Bucky.” Natasha strokes his head one more time before letting her hand come back to Steve’s. “Remember?”

Steve sighs, loud and heavy. “Yeah,” he breathes for a couple seconds. “Yeah, I know. God, is this how he felt? Was he scared like this? I really fucked up, Natasha. I did something really mean. Bucky, he didn’t deserve any of that.”

They sit tangled together in the dark amidst the terrified screams of Bucky Barnes, resting until they have enough courage to press forward.


	4. Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yayy, the finale! Sorry it's so short, this story is more about ~the journey~~ than the conclusion, you feel? I'd really like to write a follow up to this one, I think that'd be mad fun to write but we'll see how things go. 
> 
> Anyway, please excuse any mistakes and I hope you enjoy!

Steve loses count of how many days are spent moving along the narrow passageway, no turning and no more attacks. The whole time, Bucky screams and Steve whispers to himself that it can’t be real. Even as the noise gets closer the further they walk. It sparks a fearful form a hope in Steve because it must mean that soon they will reach something other than this stationary fucking hallway. 

The light that begins to blossom is so shallow it almost slips by unrecognized. Gentle glowing of ghostly green mushrooms returns to them slowly, sporadically and Steve points to a few caps peeking from out from the cracks. There aren’t words to say anymore. He and Natasha just share a small smile and keep moving, welcoming the visibility as the screams grow louder. They pick up speed, as light increases, as the volume of Bucky’s cries increases, until they don’t need hands along walls to guide them and the howling no longer sounds distant.

They’re running now, some sort of silent promise singing to them, pulling them forward. A door up ahead. Steve laughs, Natasha does too. Stumbling feet carry Steve right up to it, and his smile fades and a frown overtakes his features.

“What...what’s happening?” Steve asks. Natasha aligns herself with him and takes in the door. It’s not terribly bright, but there’s enough light to see the familiar wooden framed glass door and window displays embedded in solid rock. Painted in a wooden sign above the door reads, ‘McIntire-Sweet Swinery’.

“I don’t know, Steve.” She sounds tired. It’s a replica of the butchery that sits so far above them, seamlessly fitted into the catacombs. Natasha slowly reaches for the handle and opens the door. Forward is the only direction prevailing. She unshealths her knife. So does Steve.

The door opens and they step inside. Gaslight hits them and Steve brings a hand up to his eyes against the light, it burns his pupils and the smell in here burns his throat. He gags, coughing into the air, eyes stinging and fighting every sensation at once. The noise in here is something solidified and hammering. Instead of swarming with customers waiting to purchase meat, there are pigs packed in the interior of the swinery. Plump, pink, squealing hogs all trying to run and scream and taking up every inch of space inside the shop. The only thing to tell him that they’re still wandering the tombs instead of up above is the brown cave wall that surrounds them instead of the wooden walls of the real swinery.

It’s so loud, so bright, so jammed with the smell of animal, shit and blood. Steve takes a couple steps forward, using his shins to push against fat pig. They don’t move, they can’t move, all jammed together like this. Natasha’s trying to wade through as well, but can’t make much progress and the rope connecting the two pulls and sags, pulls and sags. Steve bends his knees as best he can and pushes with his arms against fine pink fur and gets nowhere. He tries again, groaning against the weight of such a tightly packed room.

Maybe he can fit in between them. He’s awful small. Steve then tries angling his feet to squeeze against two hogs and pushes forward, his bony ankle twisting between the beasts. It won’t work. He spins, dizzying himself, intent to open the entrance doors and free the pigs to roam the wretched tombs but his heart hiccups at the sight of a plain brick wall behind him. The door is gone and he screams in frustration. Then he turns back around to face their predicament. 

Saliva dribbles down Steve’s chin. He can’t swallow, it makes him gag even more and he can hardly see through the sharp stinging in his eyes. There’s a high pitched squealing to his right, a loaded ‘schlick’ and more squealing and Steve can’t look. He knows they can’t move with all these swines like this, Natasha grunts and gags. Steve grits his teeth and pushes again against the pigs, they snort at him and push back, squiggling around with nowhere to go. Steve laughs with nothing but sadness in his throat.

He brings the knife down into the pig’s skull, wincing when it screams. He shushes it gently, mumbling out apologies as he rips the dagger out and repeats the motion. Steve’s lip trembles but there are no tears left as the hog’s feet give out and it drops with a thud that shakes the floor. There’s another quaking of the ground that originates from somewhere to the right as Natasha’s poor pig falls down dead a few seconds later.

The swines are even louder now but Steve’s eyes are getting used to the light. He stands on top of the fat corpse of the pig, a step forward.

The pair of them inch their way across the main room of the fictional McIntire-Sweet. They slice and gut and thunder through, gagging and coughing, dribbling spit down onto the swines that aren’t in their path. Steve works hard to kill as little as possible. But it’s not like they’re real, anyway. The noises they make and the warmth of the blood on his hands say otherwise.

Natasha reaches the other side before him and pulls on the rope to get him all the way through, hoping to help him spare the swines. Real or not, it’s grizzly business. He comes stumbling to her, panting and mirroring each other’s blood splatter and grime. This is the first time they’re able to see clearly since setting foot inside the catacombs and they look awful. They look exactly how they feel.

Now they stand at the secondary door in the butchery. They share a look. Steve pushes open the second door with his shoulder and barrels through, ready for what’s next.

At first, it looks the same as the butcher filled and buzzing backroom of the real place. Steve breathes a sigh of relief and lowers his dagger to his side as Natasha follows him in. The butchers don’t look up from carving their meat. And then Steve notices one difference: these butchers aren’t cutting pig carcasses, their saws rip into living hogs that jangle around on giant chains where they’re strung from the ceiling. Thick hooks are sunk into their heaving bodies that move with ungrace and bother are diced up slowly and screaming. Steve averts his eyes and walks forward on a familiar path to cellar doors in the rear of the room. Forward.

The walls are still stone but the floor is tiled and slippery with blood even as the drain works to suck all the liquid down. He’s concentrating on not falling.

“Steve!”

His heart thuds, his bones sink. Bucky’s voice screams at him.

“Steve, help!” The cry is accompanied by violent jangling of chains and Steve’s head moves before he can stop himself. There’s no Bucky anywhere, just butchers and pigs and the smell of blood and the buzzing of saws. “Please!”

Steve’s eyes work to pick out the source of the voice and he can narrow it down to a corner in the back. His palms are sweating as he pulls Natasha towards where he thinks Bucky’s voice is originating from.

“Stop standing there and fucking help me!” screams the voice. Steve watches where it comes from but it doesn’t compute. “What are you doing, fucking help me, Steve!” Steve still just watches as a hanging pig opens it’s mouth and speaks with Bucky’s voice. It sways on it’s hook and bleeds as the Butcher digs into it and splatters blood.

Natasha pulls at Steve’s hand. He’s blinking and can’t breathe, can’t take his eyes of the swine that speaks like his dead friend. The butcher’s saw carves into it’s gut and it screams in a human language, fat body dumping out intestines and Steve yells, unsure of why, it’s just that he needs to. He’s shaking so violently as Natasha begs him to look away, to follow her, please Steve, we have to keep going. He says _I know_ but not out loud and his vision is clouding with fear. Everything feels too real.

Natasha maneuvers him to stand by the cellar door and guides his shaking hands overtop of the same giant lock that sits in the real shop. 

“Steve, I need you to breathe and to concentrate. The sooner you unlock this, the sooner we can get out of here. Can you hear me?” Natasha says, kneeling next to him. Steve nods blinking rapidly as her words sink in. And then she’s gone, taking the rope that’d been slotted over her shoulder and weaving it through the metal grates of the drain in the center of the room. She makes a knot and then another before returning to where Steve struggles.

It takes him several tries. The Bucky-pig yells things at him while he tries to do magic and spit out words in rapidity. On the fourth try, it clicks open. Natasha pulls open the door, throws the rope down and grabs Steve by the shoulders. Everything is happening too fast with too much color and noise and light and feeling and Steve thinks he’s going to pass out.

“Steve, look at me,” Natasha demands. She waits for Steve’s eyes to clear a little and stay focused on hers. “We’re going to go down a really narrow hole now. I have to cut us loose, we have to go separate.” Steve nods and Natasha is tearing up, her voice on the brink of breaking. It doesn’t make Steve come any looser, though. Instead it makes him tighten himself together and become rooted in whatever reality they’re in. Buzzing and screaming wail around them. “The chamber is right below, I promise. We’re almost there. I will be right behind you.”

Steve looks into the cellar entrance, where a staircase once greeted them and finds what looks like a rabbit burrow instead. It’s large enough to fit down, but barely. And it falls straight down into blackness. The rope that’s been thrown through it does very little to ease Steve’s anxiety.

“Go, Steve,” growls Natasha.

He sits down, legs dangling inside the hole, and takes hold of the rope. His hands are sweaty and he can’t grip it like he would like to but it’s good enough and he shimmies closer to the edge. The blackness beckons. Emptiness a welcome destination. Steve lowers himself into the pit, slowly, slowly.

 

⇟

 

James Buchanan Barnes is warden at Forning Prison, down near the meatmarket. He takes his job very seriously. He sits in his office and signs for sentences, interrogations and executions with thick black ink and wears a neat black uniform with lots of gleaming gold pins. He does this all day, everyday, as he has for years. There’s a knock on his office door.

“Come in,” he calls.

“Sir, there are two new arrivals that have been contained this morning. They await interrogation,” comes the report. James doesn’t look up from the document he’s reading, but his hand reaches for the paper’s he’s about to be handed. The guard gives him the files and leaves without another word. James’ eyes work to finish the paragraph, he signs, then places the document into the ‘finished’ pile. Habit brings the new papers into view on his desk and he begins reading.

_Natasha Romanov [prisoner 123]_  
_26 years_  
_Female_  
_Charged with: arson, bribery, disturbing the peace, forgery, identity theft, murder, shoplifting, trespassing.  
[notes: Seized outside of McIntire-Sweet Swinery, 64 Skinner’s Row, Meatmarket. Individual of dangerous skill. Known to be affiliated with the Spiders, the Heretics. Served time in Graycott Prison, escaped during sentence. Keep cuffed at all times.]_

James studies her file. He knows what the Spiders are like, he smiles at the victory of someone like her being off the streets. He turns to the next file.

_Name Unknown [prisoner 124]_  
_Age Unknown [estimated 18-24]_  
_Male_  
_Charged with: heresy, trespassing._  
_[notes: Seized outside of McIntire-Sweet Swinery, 64 Skinner’s Row, Meatmarket. Individual of unknown and dangerous skill. Attempted dark arts when arrested, abilities include the transmutation of human form (bird) through spoken word. Keep cuffed, gagged and escorted at all times.]_

A largely sought after criminal and a witch. James’ eyes twinkle and he stands, pushing an ornate chair backwards. What splendid acquisitions were brought in today and the clock hasn’t even reached noon. The polished man strides to the mirror above the fireplace; he slicks his hair back and straightens his collar. Flashing himself a grossly charming smile, James turns to exit his office, eager to greet the shiny new prisoners.


End file.
